Trump’s Trade Deficit Lie Gets Exposed Within A Day

Apart from his 2020 election loss, there are few things that Donald Trump likes to lie about as much as his tariffs. He lies about who pays for them, the trillions of dollars they supposedly generate, the jobs they are creating, and their effect on the trade deficit.

On Wednesday, for example, the president touted a massive reduction in the trade deficit.

“THE UNITED STATES TRADE DEFICIT HAS BEEN REDUCED BY 78% BECAUSE OF THE TARIFFS BEING CHARGED TO OTHER COMPANIES AND COUNTRIES,” he wrote in a social media post.

Absolutely nothing in that sentence is true.

First of all, multiple independent experts, including those from the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, have concluded that American consumers and businesses are bearing the tariff burden… and we assume those US corporations are not what Trump means by “other businesses.”

Furthermore, foreign countries pay precisely nothing.

Then there is that 78-percent figure, which the president likely got from comparing the largest monthly trade deficit of 2025 to the lowest. But that’s not how this works.

And it didn’t take long for his own government to correct him.

Not even 24 hours after Trump posted his message, the Census Bureau announced that the US trade deficit for goods and services was $901.5 billion in 2025, which was down a mere $2.1 billion from 2024.

That’s not 78 percent, it’s only about 0.2 percent.

In addition, the import of goods, i.e., the products subject to Trump’s tariffs, actually increased to a record of $1.24 trillion. The reduction of the trade deficit is solely the result of foreign countries spending more on services that US companies provide.

What the Census Bureau data did show, however, is that the trade deficit with China and the EU shrank while the imbalance between imports and exports from the rest of the world increased.

Did that hurt China? Not at all.

Last month, Beijing announced that its trade surplus grew to a record of almost $1.2 trillion on the strength of goods China sold to its trading partners other than the US. This is just one indication that the world is finding workarounds to deal with Trump’s tariffs.

As for what the future holds, the president had a prediction for that as well.

“[The trade deficit] WILL GO INTO POSITIVE TERRITORY DURING THIS YEAR, FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MANY DECADES,” he wrote.

That seems unlikely. At a clip of a $2.1-billion reduction, the US trade deficit won’t reach positive territory until 2454.